


Red as Blood

by tigriswolf



Series: dark fairy tales [11]
Category: Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale), Snow White - All Media Types, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Curses, Dark Magic, F/M, No Apologies, Psychological Trauma, Rape, Symbolism, Violence, all the revenge, happy ending from a certain point of view
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:52:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She imbues the apple she offers the king with the strongest curse of all the lands. [dark AU for Snow White]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red as Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Red as Blood  
> Fandom: Snow White  
> Disclaimer: the characters are public domain, right?  
> Warnings: um. yeah. Rape, death, violence, vengeance.  
> Pairings: ‘evil queen’/Snow White’s dad; non-con douchebag soldiers/‘evil queen’s mom; ‘evil queen’s parents  
> Rating: PG13  
> Wordcount: 790  
> Point of view: third  
> Notes: I want to write dark AUs for a few Disney movies. This is what happened when I set out of do that.  
> More notes: There is room for _so much_ more in this ‘verse. I do kinda wanna write it.  
>  Still more notes: After I wrote this, it occurred to me that this could’ve been the way _Snow White and the Huntsman_ went, if the evil queen had been smarter about it. (Also, had a much more personal stake in Snow White’s kingdom.)

She imbues the apple she offers the king with the strongest curse of all the lands. Her grandmother taught the curse to her after her now-husband's royal father's men finished with her mother, leaving her on her own bed, barely gasping, tears on her face and so much blood - 

The apple she offers the king is as red as her mother's blood, the blood she saw when she crept from the secret room her mother had shoved her in while her father died holding the invading soldiers off.

Gran taught her the curse two days after they burned her parents in cleansing fire.

"All those painted in our blood, dearling," Gran said, "will die slowly, screaming from wounds only they feel. Everything they inflicted on our blood will be inflicted on theirs." Gran paused, staring down at her, only seven years old, but ready to kill, to _avenge_. "Watch," Gran said.

She watched, she learned, and she never forgot.

In thirty years, she will meet the king, son of the man whose army conquered her homeland. She will be a noble's daughter: rich, beautiful, and able to make the grieving widower laugh. The princess will be seven years old, with no memory of her mother, who died of wasting disease mere months after her daughter's birth.

The princess will be collateral damage, like a town that was left as ashes, blood in the street. Apologies and wergild mean nothing, and until everyone of guilty blood is gone -

She imbues the apple with Gran's curse, the curse Gran said could be adjusted in intensity, and then she brings the apple to her marriage bed.

"I went walking in the fruit garden," she tells her husband, who had been newly knighted and on the other end of the realm from her home's slaughter. "I saw this and it reminded me of you." She holds up the apple, shiny as freshly-spilled blood. "Eat it with me," she murmurs, biting in and pulling it away. "Let it symbolize our love, shared and shared alike."

He reaches for it, bites into it, and smiles at her.

In six months, he wastes away, victim of the plague the army brought back from her homeland, that has been inflicting the realm for decades now. Gran was not the only vengeful sorceress, just the most powerful.

She will be regent until the king's daughter turns eighteen - but the princess, darling of the realm, sadly wastes away, too. The winter after her father, eight winters after her mother, the princess dies, too weak to even sob in fear, and she holds her stepdaughter close as the girl breathes out her last breath. 

There are no apologies or wergilds for the royal family.

She wears black when she is crowned queen, alone on the throne and with no one waiting to take it from her. All the heirs - her late husband's brother, nephew, cousin, cousin's daughter - have succumbed to the plague. Everyone with her husband's father's blood in their veins is dead. The bloodline has been destroyed, wiped from the face of the earth, and magick ensures there is no one with a drop of it left.

Apples bloom in the heart of winter and her smile is red as blood, her dress black as ebony, and her crown white as snow.

"Mirror mirror," she says, alone in her room while her new realm mourns, "show me my home."

Rebuilding is slow, even thirty years later. So little was left, for her people fight to their last breaths. Her childhood home, where her parents died, has long since fallen in, but the mirror shows her what remains. 

She sends a message to the governor her late father-in-law appointed to the province that was once a thriving nation; what was once her house, and the rest of that block, becomes a budding school for mages, named for the late princess - _Snow White Academy for the Magical Arts_ , the sign proclaims while it is constructed.

She laughs every time sees it in the mirror or hears a report on its progress, and she knows Gran cackles in the afterlife, too.

For a time, she thought about tearing her new realm down to the bare bones and leaving it dry. But she decided, instead, to turn it into an oasis for the magic her husband's father hated and feared, and so she does. The people are hesitant, but she still wears black in mourning and they see her as one of their own. She asks for their trust and they are rewarded when everything flourishes.

The Snow White Academy has sister schools in every major city and the queen thanks her people for having such open hearts.


End file.
